Podcast: Bruce Springsteen’s “High Hopes”

The perpetually cranky Dave Lifton produces and co-hosts the Popdose Podcast and contributes an occasional column when he darn well feels like it. But mostly he eats Cheetos and yells at kids to get off his lawn, which is strange because he lives in an apartment. The guiding force behind LifStrong, he can be found on Twitter at @dslifton.

A couple of weeks ago I reviewed Bruce Springsteen’s new album,High Hopes. It’s a bit of a departure from the way he usually works — unfinished tracks from the vault, no overarching theme, a few covers, etc. — and I wanted to see if I was alone in my overall opinion, which was “Yeah, this is OK, but it’s not blowing me away.” That’s not usually my reaction to a new Springsteen record.

So I thought I’d ask a few of my friends to pop on Skype and discuss it all, but when I ran it by some of my Popdose colleagues, they all declined for the following reasons:

Jeff Giles was drunk.

Chris Holmes was too busy scrolling through old Sears catalogs.

Rob Smith was having sex with Jeff’s mom.

Ted Asregadoo got stuck in Bay Area traffic.

Matt Wardlaw was sorting through his collection of REO Speedwagon outtakes.